Jack Yan still wants to influence Wellington despite loss

JACK YAN still wants to influence the city’s direction despite his second unsuccessful run at the Wellington mayoralty.

Mr Yan was having dinner with friends at the Dragonfly bar when the results came in that he came third behind Celia Wade-Brown and John Morrison respectively.

“It’s a bit of a letdown,” he said, despite gaining 2000 more votes than last time. I would have loved to have won.”

Even though he was not elected to the mayoralty and did not stand for council, he still would like to hear from Wade-Brown to share some of his ideas with her.

His opinion of the re-elected mayor is optimistic for her second term, saying that in her first term “she had a period of adjustment but now she can hit the ground running”.

Mr Yan, who was born in Hong Kong but emigrated to New Zealand when he was four years old, thinks mayoralty is the best way to make a difference in the city as opposed to being a councillor.

“I don’t want to be a councillor to bring business thinking in to politics,” he said, and would rather be a businessman in politics.

Despite the result he was still proud of the effort he and his team had put into the campaign, but thinks a longer run-up might have been beneficial.

The big question for Mr Yan’s supporters is will he try for a third shot at the mayoralty in 2016, and for that he could provide no definite answer

“I’m still interested in serving the public – you kinda have to be if you want to be in this game.”

Mr Yan’s social media-heavy campaign strategy which targeted younger voters is not something he would change, despite younger voters tending not to vote as much as their older counterparts.

“Our younger voters are getting older,” he said, but he also noted having no ballot boxes at universities and young voters not receiving their voting papers might have put his target audience at a disadvantage.

As for what’s next? He said he was looking forward to focusing more on his businesses which have been put on the backburner while campaigning, but would still like to have a voice in shaping our city.

“If you leave it to politicians they just play politics and that’s just not going to work.”